Support just a late-night phone call away

A few weeks ago, my cellphone rang about 11:45 at night, and I found myself on my feet and reaching for it before my eyes were even open.

It was dark. It was late. It was my daughter.

I’d like to say I was instantly aware and awake when I answered but that would be a misstatement. I will say that I had been listening carefully and giving her some kind of foggy advice for about six minutes when I felt the cobwebs lift and realized that I was finally fully functional.

Automatic parenting: the same impulse that makes it possible to catch a toddler’s glass of milk mid-tip, while carrying on a conversation with a friend, making dinner and listening for the baby to wake up through the monitor.

Every so often, I wonder when my children will be old enough for me to tell them not to call home after 10 p.m. unless someone is bleeding or on fire.

Then I realize they won’t ever be.

At 19 and 23, they call often, and usually under two circumstances:

They are walking, commuting from class to the library or from the subway to work, depending on the child.

These are usually the casual reaching out conversations, the “I’m not really doing much and I’d kind of like to hear your voice” conversations.

Sometimes there is important information they want to relay, sometimes not. Sometimes they have a specific question, sometimes not.

With a few minutes to spare of their own, they are often surprised if they catch their father or me at a bad time, a meeting or a deadline making it impossible for us to talk.

Even if the call isn’t particularly important, I always feel bad if I can’t drop everything.

It’s a moment missed, a connection.

But the other kind of connection, the wake-me-up-out-of-a-sound-sleep connection, comes less frequently, and I cherish it every time.

It is the adult-child equivalent of the talk that comes just at bedtime, when you, as the parent, are more than ready for an end to a very long day.

The child has been tucked in, watered, read to and otherwise supervised through a bedtime ritual that seems to grow exponentially with the parent’s degree of fatigue.

“Mom?” he says, just as you have thankfully turned off the light and headed for the door.

“What?”

“I need to tell you something.”

Oy.

These are the real conversations of childhood, the ones where darkness is the medium that allows for honesty, and life lessons, and love.

Later, those conversations occur in the car, across the divide between the front seat and back, without eye contact, where words can flow without embarrassment or recrimination, questions asked and answered, guidance gently given.

Then they grow up, or begin to, and the phone calls come at 11:45 at night, long after the day has ended for you but just at the moment when the roommates are out or the library is closing or the dilemma can no longer be contained, a cup spilling over.

And you answer.

At that hour, it’s a request for a pep talk, a medical consult, career planning advice, help with roommate negotiation, silent sympathy or a simple conversation with someone who loves them.

Non-negotiable, those midnight talks.

So, in short, I don’t mind if my kids call, text, email, tweet, Facebook message, Gchat, telegraph, send smoke signals or otherwise contact me or their father at any time of the day or night.

At any given moment, whenever the call comes in, I will try to be available, awake and able to ferret out and interpret the undercurrent of upset in the child’s voice.

How long will they continue to think of us first when they need to talk?